With Crysis, they're not just system requirements, they're system demands

Crysis will be the
landmark game this year for hardcore PC gamers to prove that their platform of
choice is technically superior to the newest consoles. Of course, the required
hardware to run Crysis costs far more
than a $400 console, but that’s always been the case with the cutting edge of
PC gaming.

After months of guess work surrounding the system
requirements of Crysis, the official
specifications were released today. Gamers running Windows Vista will need
slightly faster systems with more memory than those still using Windows XP.

Supported Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for
Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not
supported. Integrated chipsets are not supported. Updates to your video and
sound card drivers may be required.

Unfortunately, those with minimum spec machines can expect Crysis to look nothing like what they’ve
seen so far in video and screenshots. Crytek’s CEO, Cevat Yerli, explained to GameSpot, “The quality
of Crysis running on [minimum spec
hardware] does equal the shading and texture quality of games that are about
three years old, but with polygonal detail that is bigger then (sic) games from
that same generation. The scaling happens in various areas, such as
shading-quality, texture-resolution, shadows. View distance and interactivity
are close to Far Cry.”

Yerli later added, “I am happy that we managed to scale down
Crysis--which is on average 10 times
more pushy than Far Cry--down to Far Cry specs. But Crysis is a high-end game that shall define what's now and in the
future. Enjoy it as such as much as you can. It's like a concept car available
and affordable now. I like also this quote somebody gave: "It's like a
sexy blond girl with a PhD degree," upon which I said, "But with
curly hair."”

quote: This isnt true. A 8800gts 320mB costs 280$. That's what you need to play crysis with high details along with any modern dual core cpu. Even if you dont already have a dual core cpu, you can get one for 100$ and still be below the 400$

Now that the demo is out, I think that has been proven wrong. But the game actually looks very good at the lower settings, so I can't complain that I can't run it at the higher settings.

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